After all, Tom’s new Chevrolet Equinox SUV didn’t cost him a dime. He doesn’t have to pay for his own fuel. Even if he’s alone in the car, he can still use the car-pool lane on the freeway.

And if you lean over and take a whiff of the emissions from Tom’s tailpipe – that is, his car’s tailpipe – the only thing you’ll be breathing is harmless water vapor.

Oh, it’s a love affair, all right. The only sad thing is that as so often happens with intense love affairs, it’s destined to be a short one – just three months, in fact.

Tom, you see, is among the first 100 people in America who have been chosen to test drive, under real-world conditions, General Motors’ new Equinox Fuel Cell SUV, an electric car that runs on hydrogen and is now being tested in Southern California; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Dubbed “Project Driveway,” the program allows Tom and the other drivers to drive the experimental cars for three months, all for free – GM even picks up the tab for hydrogen fill-ups – and then GM will take them back and give them to the next 100 participants.

“It’s a dream come true,” Tom, 60, a Tustin-based CPA with a lifelong interest in science and engineering, told me as we took his Equinox out for a spin last week. “I really believe this (fuel-cell technology) is the wave of future.”

And although I’m not what anyone would call an “early adopter” to new technologies – I still miss the black rotary-dial telephone – I have to admit that Tom’s enthusiasm is infectious. It’s a dandy car.

Except for being festooned with the chemical symbol for H20, it looks like any ordinary mid-sized SUV; actually, it is an ordinary Equinox SUV that’s been converted from gasoline to hydrogen fuel cell power, which uses the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. It will go 150 to 200 miles between hydrogen fill-ups, and has a top speed of 100 mph – although the fastest Tom will admit to taking it is 85. I’m not sure how GM will feel about this, but Tom let me drive it, and it handles very nicely.

And as I said, it emits only warm water vapor. When I put my face near the idling exhaust pipes – something I generally wouldn’t do with my 2005 Ford Explorer – it tasted and smelled like the air at an indoor swimming pool.

Still, there are some drawbacks. One big one is that because it’s a limited-production test vehicle, each fuel-cell Equinox reportedly costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. GM won’t say exactly how much one costs, but it’s a bundle, and obviously way beyond my budget – and almost everyone else’s as well. Also, hydrogen refueling stations are currently few and far between; for Tom the only readily available one in Orange County is at UC Irvine.

And while it’s true that the Equinox fuel-cell SUV emits no pollutants directly – which is why it qualifies for a low-emission vehicle carpool lane sticker – it’s not completely pollutant-free. Producing the hydrogen to power the vehicle – it’s usually made from natural gas – creates at least some harmful emissions.

So the big question is whether the cost of fuel-cell vehicles will ever go down enough, and the number of hydrogen refueling stations will ever go up enough, to make the vehicles practical for the average traveling Joe. As my Register colleague Pat Brennan noted in a recent article about another hydrogen fuel-cell car being tested in California, Honda’s FCX Clarity, the joke among some alternative-fuel experts is that hydrogen-powered cars are the cars of the future – and always will be. Tom, of course, disagrees.

Nevertheless, with gas at $4.50 and up per gallon, there is enormous popular interest in cars like the Equinox fuel-cell SUV. According to Scott Brierley, the GM “driver relationship manager” for Tom Williams and a half-dozen other “Project Driveway” participants in Orange County, some 50,000 people nationwide wanted to test drive the fuel-cell Equinox. Unlike Tom, most didn’t live close enough to a hydrogen refueling station to qualify for the program, but it gives you an idea of the potential.

As for Tom, although he’s just two weeks into his relationship with the Equinox fuel-cell SUV, it’s clear that he’s been swept completely off his feet.

“This thing is so well put together, I dread the day when I have to give it back,” Tom says.

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